"In our Lowrider Section there are a lot of compilations series, new and old, like Thump Records' Old School series and their Latin Oldiesseries and East Side Records' East Side Story series," said Orion,who works in the Soul & Hip-Hop section of Amoeba Music Hollywood, where the demand for lowrider music is so great that it gets its own section.

Lowrider music includes classic soul, funk, oldies, rNb, and Latin oldies, plus other types of music too, like rap and hip-hop and including lots of Latin rap, which is generally filed in the hip-hop section. There too you'll find the rap flavored lowrider DVDs, said Orion, noting that there are additional lowrider DVDs to be found upstairs in the Hollywood store's impressive vast DVD department. There are DVDs galore on the subject of cars which is "a pretty big portion within the Sports and Special Interests section," said Maryann, who works in that section of Amoeba Hollywood. And of the topics included in the car section? "Street racing, monster trucks, drifting, racing (NASCAR, IndyCar races etc), customizing, classic/antique, and of course lowriding," she said. There are approximately 20 lowrider DVD titles currently in stock.

Lowriding, for the uninitiated,is when you take a car a or truck (often classic American cars from sixties or fifties but other decades too) and modify its suspension system (often with hydraulics) -- the ultimate goal being that the auto will ride as low to the ground as physically possible. These lowrider vehicles often have user controlled height adjustable suspension -- as witnessed by the videos above and below -- which allow them to pull off some amazing antics. And while it is cool to look at video footage, there is nothing like seeing these rides up close in action. The sites below usually have info on car shows but one site called OneBadPup specializes in SoCal car shows and has been posting pics of them for the past two years (that's one of their their great shots below).

Basically drag racing is an auto acceleration contest from a standing start between two cars (or other type of vehicle) standing side by side, and over a measured distance -- usually a quarter-mile (1,320 feet). And while drag racing is thought of as a strictly American past time, it is celebrated all over the globe with avid drag car racers in such lands as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, and Northern Europe.

Above is one of my all time favorite drag racing compilations (check out that school bus doing a wheelie!) with the best music. It is "Burning Rubber (Remix)" by Big Stick, who shot the video footage and who, as a music outfit in the late eighties, churned out some of the greatest tunes ("Crack Attack," "Jesus Was Born on An Indian Reservation," etc) and a sound that carved its unique soundscape somewhere between industrial, rap, and manic rock.

But as dear to their hearts as music was, Big Stick's passion for auto and drag car racing, as witnessed via their side project the Drag Racing Underground, under which they have released several DVDs of this fascinating past time. Click here for the website.

Additionally there are also many other websites on the topic, including DragTimes.Com. Meanwhile, check the following video collection of drag cars doing a lot of wheel stands.